Meet the Author Tea: John Francis Trump

Post Date:10/10/2017 4:18 PM

The Friends of the Library are pleased to present John Francis Trump at the Meet the Author Tea on Thursday, Oct. 19 in Meeting Room B at the Chapel Hill Public Library. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m., and the program will run from 4 to 5 p.m. Trump will be discussing his book “Still & Barrel: Craft Spirits in the Old North State,” which recounts the history of manufacturing whiskey, gin, vodka, and rum in North Carolina.

Trump is managing editor of Carolina Journal. For more than 30 years, he has worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers in Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Alabama and North Carolina.

His interest in distilled spirits was piqued in 2015 when he and his wife embarked on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. His interest in whiskey dovetailed into a blog, and in 2016, into the book, which includes photos by his wife, Lisa.

Still & Barrel: Craft Spirits in the Old North State takes the reader on a journey across the state telling the stories of some unlikely entrepreneurs and the sometimes extreme legal and regulatory hurdles these pioneers had to overcome. One reviewer said that reading it “makes you thirsty.”

John and his wife, Lisa, who works at the Wake Forest University School of Law, live in Madison, North Carolina. They have 14-year-old twin boys named Jackson and Jacob. John and his family will soon be moving to the Triangle area.